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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24408763">Uhyre</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks'>tentacledicks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nachtwald [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Watch Dogs (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Fluff, M/M, Polyamory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:13:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24408763</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing on the shore smiled, the skin around its green eyes crinkling with mirth.</p>
<p>“Wrench,” Marcus said again, heart pounding. “Shut the fuck up. That’s not human.”
</p><p>“He’s not—what?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Marcus Holloway/Josh Sauchak/Wrench</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nachtwald [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1449112</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Uhyre</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This has been half-finished for months but I finally sat down and cleaned it up. I have other stories to tell in this 'verse but this is the last of what I've got already outlined and written, so those are likely to show up any time soon.</p>
<p>Happy 6th anniversary to WD1! Have a fic where Marcus thinks about how inhuman and creepy Aiden is. <em>For fun.</em></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Man, I don’t know about this whole mandrake thing,” Marcus said, knee deep in black bogwater and seriously wondering how his life had gotten to this point. Wearing high boots didn’t matter much when the water sloshed over the tops of them, and he’d laced them as tight as he could—didn’t stop his socks from being soaked. Ugh. This shit would never wash out completely.</p>
<p>“Look, Josh can’t handle the screams, right?” Wrench, one of the lights of his life, was <em> also </em> knee deep in bogwater. And shoulder deep. If it weren’t for the mask, Marcus was afraid that he’d go headfirst in.</p>
<p>“<em>I </em> can’t handle the screams. You can’t handle the screams either. That’s the point of mandrake roots: they scream.” He sighed, gently nudging a floating log away. At least this section of the bog wasn’t thick with bodies. The wisps kept trying to lure them in that direction but both of them were used to ignoring the lights by now.</p>
<p>“Right, well, that’s why we’re wearing charms. <em> But</em>. There’s this tincture he needs, and it is <em> very </em> cost-prohibitive, Marcus! So <em> I’m </em> going to make it. Because I can do that, actually. One of my aunts taught me how, she used to use it flying around in her cauldron.”</p>
<p>“Your aunt flew in a cauldron?” Marcus took a moment to mull over the image, then narrowed his eyes. “Your aunt could <em> fly</em>?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but she also ate babies near the end there, so I don’t think <em> everything </em> she talked about was a good idea. Cover your ears.” With no more warning than that, Wrench yanked a mandrake up by its stem, the damn thing’s shrieks filtering past Marcus’s fingers in his ears.</p>
<p>At least now he knew the charm worked. Marcus gritted his teeth, squinting through his spectacles at the writhing shape of the mandrake root, its tendrils uncannily like those of a human infant. Normally, it’d kill a human outright; the hunters brand on the back of his neck was burning hot, eating up that magic, and he could see Wrench’s tattoos blazing with a similar light, but the <em> real </em> savior was the wooden disk each of them had hanging on a thong around their necks. He’d scoffed at the need for it, but he wasn’t laughing now. Shit hurt.</p>
<p>After a few more seconds of unearthly wailing, the mandrake went silent. They died almost as soon as they were uprooted, but that was plenty of time for them to kill someone. From the way Wrench casually handled the root, this wasn’t the first time he’d uprooted one.</p>
<p>Sometimes, Marcus wasn’t sure he’d ever get the whole story there. Josh was someone he understood; what Horatio hadn’t known, Josh had been willing to volunteer, and his blunt honesty was a welcome relief after the games Marcus had been playing with the Order and their secrets. But Wrench? Wrench was a closed book. He’d had most of his tattoos <em> before </em> Marcus had rescued him, and he’d never said how he ended up in that Order cell in the first place. He knew too much about the hunter brands and how they were shaped, and examined star-iron blades like he knew the way they were forged.</p>
<p>He dropped hints like this sometimes, where they were just absurd enough to be fake, but too close to real for Marcus to dismiss them. Horatio and Sitara had been skeptical at first, thinking that Wrench was an Order witch planted to root out sedition, but Marcus knew him better than that. Even if he never got the whole story, Wrench was honest in his own way.</p>
<p>Wrench was also honestly fucking <em> covered </em> in black mud, and the aura of satisfaction around him didn’t fade as he slogged back through the water to Marcus’s side. “I should only need one, don’t you think?”</p>
<p>“I have no idea what you’re going to do with that thing, but for my own sanity? Yeah, you only need one.” Marcus snorted, then tugged Wrench close to bump their foreheads together. “You reek.”</p>
<p>“You both reek.”</p>
<p>Faster than thought, Marcus hooked Wrench closer and drew his sword, whirling around to face the threat. He hadn’t noticed the burn of something approaching past the mandrake’s screams—<em>sloppy fucking work, Holloway</em>—but there was a man standing on the bank now. Something that looked like a man at least, because whatever it was, it wasn’t human. His magic sense was screaming at him now that he’d noticed the guy, and he could feel the way Wrench went perfectly still beside him.</p>
<p>It probably wasn’t undead, not without the cold tang of the grave on the back of his tongue, but it looked too much like a person to be anything else. Taller than average, brown hair, tired green eyes and a raised eyebrow at Marcus’s defensive posture. It was wearing some kind of armor, not unlike the Order armor Marcus had packed away in a trunk back home, but the style was several centuries out of date and whatever it was, it had eschewed gauntlets entirely in favor of bloody bandages wrapped tight around its hands.</p>
<p>His gaze dropped to the sword the thing had strapped around its waist and his heart stopped. Star-iron. That shouldn’t be fucking possible, because only Order initiates were given star-iron blades, and the hunter brand meant they couldn’t be resurrected as the blasphemous undead.</p>
<p>“Yeah? What’s it to you, asshole?” said Wrench, making Marcus’s heart start again for all the wrong reasons. Because Wrench and Josh were amazing, powerful, incredible spellcasters, and they <em> still </em> couldn’t sense the underlying shifts of magical power the way Marcus could. All Wrench saw was a guy in old Order gear and he didn’t know that something <em> much </em> more dangerous was standing there.</p>
<p>“Wrench,” he managed through his tight throat, his knuckles pale with how hard his grip was on his sword.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think the Beast let hunters into his forest,” the thing said, glancing down at that same sword. It made no move to reach for its own sword, bloody hands hanging limp on either side of its body.</p>
<p>“Uh, obviously he doesn’t.” There was a sneer in Wrench’s voice, one that made Marcus twitch. His stupid, wonderful, <em> idiotic </em> lover was going to get himself killed at this rate. “So why the hell are <em> you </em> here?”</p>
<p>The thing on the shore smiled, the skin around its green eyes crinkling with mirth.</p>
<p>“Wrench,” Marcus said again, heart pounding. “Shut the fuck up. That’s not human.”</p>
<p>“He’s not—what?”</p>
<p>It laughed outright this time, a low, raspy chuckle that <em> sounded </em> so disturbingly human that it gave Marcus chills. Whatever was wearing the skin of that old hunter, it was too good a mimic for comfort. Fuck. He should’ve remembered just how dangerous the Nachtwald could be. Living on the edges had made him complacent.</p>
<p>“Relax, kid,” the thing said, folding its arms and rocking back on its heels. “I’m not here to pick a fight. Just curious is all. The Beast didn’t tell me he let humans in sometimes, and you’re some of the first to come this deep.”</p>
<p>“What the fuck are you?” Wrench was practically vibrating with anxious energy beside him, the slight tremble in his limbs hidden by the grip Marcus still had tight around his waist. Not exactly the easiest position to fight from, but he had the bad feeling that he couldn’t win this fight no matter what.</p>
<p>“Not a hunter anymore,” the thing said cryptically, its eyes flicking down to the mandrake root in Wrench’s fist. “You’d have to ask the Beast for a good answer. Not that he’s likely to tell you, cryptic bastard.”</p>
<p>Abruptly, Marcus remembered something. Clara, thoughtful and vague, mentioning offhand that the Beast had something to keep him busy. Something that improved his mood enough to allow the elves back into Nachtwald, a new fact of life that they were tentatively taking advantage of now. Some<em>one</em>, whoever it was, that probably hadn’t signed up to be a plaything in the first place.</p>
<p>Looking at the old Order armor and the thing that wasn’t human in a human skin, Marcus figured they’d just met the Beast’s new toy.</p>
<p>“Marcus?” Wrench asked, voice so low that it was barely audible. Despite that, the thing on the bank smiled slightly wider. It could hear them. Fuck.</p>
<p>“I think he knows the Beast, and I think we should probably head home now,” Marcus said, keeping his voice level and even despite the way fear tried to close his throat. No point in being quiet, but no point in being rude either. Ruder than they had been. If they were lucky, that faint air of amusement would follow this thing back to the Beast and they wouldn’t get kicked out of their little cabin on the edges of the cursed forest.</p>
<p>“Both of those are true statements,” the thing said, taking a step back and half-turning to walk away. It dragged its bandaged fingers through its hair, chuckling softly again as it shook its head. For whatever reason, it found them funny, not dangerous.</p>
<p>They needed to keep it that way. They <em> really </em> needed to be funny, not dangerous.</p>
<p>“Just like that?” Wrench demanded, his grip on the mandrake tight.</p>
<p>“Just like that,” the thing said, before taking a running leap and shifting seamlessly into the shape of a wolf. Unlike the Beast, it was ruddy and dark, delicate black points on its paws and ears, a shock of pale fur at its chest and the tip of its tail. Its ears pivoted, bright green eyes pinning them in place before it finally opened its mouth in a gaping, wolfish grin.</p>
<p>And then, as silently as it had arrived, it left.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Marcus breathed, only relaxing when the Order brand on the back of his neck stopped burning. This deep in the Nachtwald, his magic sense was always a little wonky—but if he could trust it, all the scary shit had stopped paying attention.</p>
<p>“Was he—”</p>
<p>“Not here.” Marcus grimaced, rubbing Wrench’s hip in apology for how sharp his tone had been. “We’ll talk it over when we get home. See if Sitara has anything to add. Let’s just… head back, have a couple baths, and just…”</p>
<p>“Pretend this never happened. Got it.” Wrench started to pull away, then paused. “Should we tell Josh that we nearly got eaten so I could make him a flying potion?”</p>
<p>“<em>Fuck </em> no. Not until you give him the present at least. We’ll tell him <em> after </em> he gets a chance to be excited, alright?”</p>
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